Shadows english version
by vog08
Summary: OneShot.


**Title: **Shadows  
**Pairing **Ennis/Jack  
**Rating **none  
**Disclaimer **I am not Annie Proulx and sadly I never will be her – so all recognition for the wonderful original characters Ennis and Jack belongs to her and her alone. I am only borrowing these two heros and I will give them back, I promise. Obviously I make no money from my story, I'm just passing the time.  
**Feedback** Yes, because it's the best motivation I can get ;-) !!!

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It was during the telephone call to Texas that he was there for the first time. He stood close behind him, unseen and unnoticed by the man whose private life had been shattered within seconds, whose soul on this day was shrouded in black cloth, and whose heart at this moment turned to stone as he held the postcard in his hand.

He eavesdropped on the telephone call. He felt the infinite sorrow that vibrated between Texas and Wyoming and lay like an iron chain around the man who from this day forward was only a shadow of his former self. A broken man of whose life nothing more remained than memories of what used to be and what could have been. Trapped by a guilt whose gravity pulled him endlessly downward and tore him apart inside. Bowed down with grief over the loss of a love whose value he first comprehended in the days and weeks that followed, whose deprivation caused him physical and spiritual pain and gripped him with a violence that surpassed everything he had formerly known.

He was witness to the unbearable anguish of the man, and he could not help but experience a certain satisfaction. His own feelings, which had remained unseen throughout all the years, which he could not and ought not to express, for whose existence there was no room, were now bundled in this man who united in himself the sorrow of both men and who was smashed to pieces under the burden. Like a ship without a captain, in the weeks to come this man swam in an ocean of sadness, directionless and helpless, spinning around in the rough and pitiless sea.

It was at the house of his parents that he first revealed himself to the man, in the room that for so many years hid a secret and over the course of two decades safeguarded a love that never could be but yet was. Among the old toys, faded jackets and worn shoes they hung. The two shirts that the man, in a moment of discovery, found and held close. Into whose fabric he whispered words of love unheard by the rest of the world. Words for which he had waited in vain so many years, whose existence he had nevertheless always sensed. He saw in the man's eyes the tears that welled up so strongly in this moment of weakness. And he stretched out his hand to touch him, to feel his warm skin, and to let him know that he was there.

A few weeks later he accompanied the man to the wedding of his elder daughter and sat with him in the front pew in the little village chapel on the outskirts of Riverton. He had eyes for no one except the sinewy, angular man at his side, into whose face life had cut deep lines of grief over the past few weeks. And he looked into the countenance of the man who was moved by being present at a ceremony in which he himself had been a participant so many years ago and whose heart in this moment heard the sealing of the bonds of matrimony with another man. An attractive young man with black hair who was the breath of life for him, whose existence simultaneously spelled heaven and hell, in whose blue eyes he saw mirrored the infinity of his being and in whose soul there was a place for him. For the lonely wanderer between two worlds. And he gently leaned forward, kissed the man on the mouth, and softly whispered his name. _"Ennis."_

Summer turned into autumn and with the growing darkness the man opened up his heart. Not a night passed in which he did not call out the name of his soulmate and friend in sorrow, or whisper it in profound desire. Nights in which his dreams granted him the presence of the man whom he missed so painfully and in which he finally found words. Words of regret, guilt, and despair breathed just as gently as words of love, longing, and passion.

And it came about more and more often that the invisible man entered into his awareness in the dark hours, and allowed him to sense that he was there at his side.

When November came and the man decided to go to Pine Creek, he accompanied him. He walked beside him as he climbed to the summit, warmed his hands with him at the campfire, shared the many unshed tears, mourned together with him for a man to whom he could never again be near, and in his presence wrapped himself in the memories of a time when they were together. In the lucky hours they were granted in a paradise whose inhabitants they were for two or three weeks each year. For twenty years.

It was in these peaceful, fogbound and chilly hours of November that both men found forgiveness. That they opened a pathway into their souls, that they allowed their hearts to speak and begged for a reconciliation.

In the solitude of the wintry forest and rocks, they found a warm place. And they realized that what they had was a gift. So fine and valuable, so precious and rare, that the ordinary men from Wyoming who had been taught nothing except that life demanded privation and sacrifice, could not accept it while they were both alive. And they dared not fight for it because this mutual love that was bestowed upon them was forbidden fruit that in the end caused them to be cast out of the Garden of Eden.

And now that only one man was alive, who united in himself the memory of their life together, with which to honor the dead man and release him from his shadowy existence, the two could find peace.

One man forgave the other, the other forgave himself, took the love of his life into his soul and gave him a place in his heart. On that night the invisible man shared the tent with the living man, held him in his dreams, dried his tears, and whispered to him, _"Let be, let be."_

And what had begun more than twenty years previously, came to an end. The circle of life was completed.


End file.
